Bear with me, this is my first time posting on ESL Discussion Board. I am intereted in your opinions on the relative merits of obtaining a TESL Certificate by studying on-line.

To become a teacher I believe that classroom training is better, in my case there are some mitigating circumstances:

I have a degree and have worked for a number of years in Corporate/Business world. I have run training courses on topics unrelated to Language skills. Some of these courses have been to people who who speak English as a second language. I am mainly interested in teaching adults. Willl an online course to becomes TESL/TOEFL certified leave me with a big skills gap?

I believe that you will have a big skills gap if you go the online route. That said, it's better than nothing, so if you have no other options available to you, then by all means do it. I think that an important aspect of any training course is a practicum.Some of the skills that you have learned as a corporate trainer will be directly applicable, but ESL does have a lot of specific skills that are either picked up in trial by fire experience, or learned in a practicum section of your training. Good luck. You should also post this on the teacher training board.